Unidentified
by SixGoldenCoins
Summary: Strange events are occurring in Arendelle, events no one can seem to explain.
1. Chapter 1

Despite her powers over the cold, Elsa had always enjoyed summer. It did not last very long in countries as far north as Arendelle, so she cherished every day of it. During her childhood, when her parents had confined her to her room, she would often look out her window at the blue skies, watching the various, colorful birds fly through the air and the trees blow about in the summer wind. At the time though, Elsa could only experience summer as a spectator, never as a participant. In spite of the fact that she was now queen and had free reign to go wherever she liked, Elsa still spent most of her time indoors. The irony was not lost on her.

At the moment, the sun's rays shone through the large window of the castle's study, lighting up the room. Clad in a blue-grey, shortsleeve summer dress, Elsa sat at her desk, surrounded by various papers; trade documents, letters from suitors (she always felt bad when she rejected them), and invitations to events in neighboring kingdoms.

Elsa looked up from her work and eyed the window. She got up, went over to it, and opened it. Sounds of birds chirping and people out in the main town area floated through the window. A wave of warm air washed over Elsa.

_That's better_, Elsa thought. She went back to her seat and resumed her writing tasks.

As Elsa wrote, she heard a knock at the door.

"Your Highness?"

"Come in."

Her maid, Gerda, walked into the room, carrying a tray with a teapot. She set it down on a table near Elsa's desk, picked up the pot, and poured its hot contents into a small teacup. Gerda set it onto a saucer and placed it near Elsa.

"Your tea, your Majesty."

"Thank you Gerda", Elsa said, looking up at her maid with a smile. "And you don't have to call me that, just 'Elsa' is fine."

"I wouldn't think of it, ma'am," replied Gerda.

"Well, I suppose if that's what you're used to."

Gerda looked over at the open window.

"It is a beautiful day out today," she commented.

"It is. Maybe later we can all go out there and enjoy it, as soon as I can get this tedious paperwork finished."

Gerda smiled. "I wish you luck with that. Will there be anything else you need?"

"No, that will be all for now. Thank you."

Gerda gave a quick curtsy, then left the room, closing the door behind her.

Elsa turned her attention back to her work. She lifted the teacup to her lips and took a sip of the piping hot tea.

_Mmm, lemon_, she thought.

For the next few minutes, the sounds of Elsa's pen could be heard scribbling about, giving her signature for trade documents and short-but-polite rejections to letters from her would-be suitors. She was just about to sign her name for a seed shipment when a knock came on the door.

"My Queen? If you have a moment?"

The voice was much deeper than Gerda's, but Elsa recognized it immediately.

"Come in, Kai."

The portly manservant opened the door and peered in. "I have a farmer here who would like to see you."

"Can it wait?"

"He says it is urgent."

Elsa gave a small sigh. "Send him in."

Kai moved aside, letting the farmer come into the room, then went in himself, closing the door. The farmer was a tall, wiry man with a thick mustache and large brown eyes. He removed his hat and bowed to Elsa.

"My Lady. Lukas Evensen, at your service."

"To what do I owe this visit, Lukas?"

"Something terrible has happened at my farm, your Majesty. Would you accompany me there?" he replied, a worried expression on his face.

"I'm afraid I don't have the time for that. Why don't you just tell me your problem?"

"It is better that I show you. Please, I am not trying anything funny. It is something you ought to see for yourself."

Elsa thought for a moment. It was a nice day out, and this was a way for her to enjoy the weather without feeling like she was shirking her duties. And she _could_ always finish her paperwork later.

"Very well. This had better be important, though. Kai, if you could file these papers away for me? I will come back to them later."

"Of course, your Highness."

* * *

The carriage made its way down the dirt road, Lukas riding his horse beside it. They made their way down past the farmer's home and stopped near his cornfield. Elsa and her two guards stepped out.

"Please stay with the carriage. We should only be here a short time," Elsa instructed to the driver.

Lukas stepped off his horse. He tied it to a fence post and patted its snout a few times, then started to walk towards the cornfield. He beckoned to Elsa and the guards.

"This way."

The three of them followed Lukas through the numerous, still-growing stalks of corn until they came to a large, circular clearing. Elsa looked down at the ground, and saw that the stalks in the area had been flattened, yet each one was still perfectly intact; they had not been broken at all. Lukas noticed the look of curiosity on Elsa's face.

"Strange, isn't it? This is just one area, I've been finding other clearings just like this one. This is the biggest circle, but there's smaller ones nearby. C'mon."

The four of them walked further, leaving the main clearing and moving through a small path of more flattened stalks. At the end, it led out into another clearing, not quite as large as the first.

"I haven't looked through my whole field yet, but I've found five of these in total so far. I went to bed last night and everything was fine, and then these appear when I get up. At first I thought it was all just some damn troublemaking kids, but I didn't find any footprints other than my own out here. There's no way these things are gonna grow anymore. I'm telling you, I've just lost a whole lot of money from all these destroyed crops."

Elsa surveyed the clearing, then looked back at the small path they had just come from.

"Give me a moment, Lukas."

With a wave of her hand, a platform of ice materialized. Elsa stepped onto it and began to manipulate it upwards. It carried her up, up, until she was about a hundred feet above the ground. From her elevated position, Elsa was able to look down on the entire field and see the clearings from the air. Lukas had missed two; there was seven circles in total. The largest circle was in the center of the cornfield, with six smaller ones around it. Two were on top, two were on the bottom, and two more were on either side of the center circle, on the left and right. Each small circle was connected to the large one via a path of flattened stalks, like the one Elsa had just walked through. Whoever had made these patterns must have had knowledge of geometry; each small circle was the exact same size, and the paths on the top and bottom of the large circle formed an exact 33-degree angle.

Elsa made her frozen platform float back down, gently lowering herself to the ground. Once it had finished its descent, Elsa evaporated the platform with another wave of her hand. She turned to Lukas.

"This is all very odd, but why did you feel it necessary to show me this? This sort of issue is more appropriate for my agriculture minister."

"That is not all that's happened, your Majesty. There is...one more thing I have to show you."

* * *

Elsa sat back in her carriage, closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She was sitting by herself now, having instructed her two guards to stay with Lukas that night. After the farmer showed her what had happened to his herd of cows, she insisted on it.

In the space of a single night, all of Lukas' cows had been slaughtered. Each one was missing their entire set of internal organs; brain, heart, lungs, liver, everything. Even their eyes and tongues were gone. Every cow had also been completely drained of blood. However, other than that there wasn't a single scratch anywhere on the carcasses. Someone, or something, had somehow managed to remove all of that without making a single cut. It wasn't until after Lukas sliced open a cow's chest that they could even see it was missing its innards. At least the missing organs made it easier for the carcasses to be disposed of, there was less to burn to ashes and bury.

Elsa opened her eyes again and looked out the carriage' window, at the sky. It was starting to get cloudy, and what had been a bright summer day was now shadowy and ominous.


	2. Chapter 2

Even though it was summer, Kristoff Bjorgman's sleigh could still easily travel through the various paths of grass and dirt that made up Arendelle's wilderness, just like it could with the snow and ice in winter.

Kristoff held the reins in his hands, being pulled along by his reindeer Sven. He had been Arendelle's official Ice Master and Deliverer for a little over a year, and he loved what he did. Ice was his life, after all.

Beside Kristoff sat the diminutive snowman, Olaf. Walking beside the trio was the huge snow golem, Marshmallow, easily keeping up with them with his large strides. Slung across Marshmallow's back was a custom pack, made out of that odd ice cloth that only Queen Elsa was able to create. In addition to the blocks of ice that sat in the sleigh, dozens more lay inside Marshmallow's pack.

"How far along are we for the morning deliveries, Olaf?", asked Kristoff.

Olaf looked down at the papers he was holding, which displayed the different orders they were to deliver that day. He moved his pen down over each checked-off item.

"Hmmm...we have one more delivery to make, then we should be done for the morning."

"Great. Who's it going to?"

"One Lukas Evensen, down by the cornfields."

"All right. You and Marshmallow can shove off for now, if you want."

"Okey-dokey!"

Olaf set his pen and papers aside and hopped out of the sleigh. He beckoned to Marshmallow.

"C'mon Marsh, there's some flowers I've found that you just have to smell!"

"Okay," he replied simply.

As the two snowmen walked off, Kristoff and Sven continued along to their destination.

"I can't wait to get this delivery finished. After this we can go get some lunch. How about it Sven?"

The reindeer looked back at his friend.

"_Oh yeah, I think I'm gonna go for some carrot stew!_" said Kristoff in his reindeer voice.

What they were about to find at Lukas' farm would make them lose their appetite completely.

* * *

Just like the day before, Elsa sat at her desk, writing signatures and filling out forms. A queen's work was never finished, it seemed.

The weather today was different; the sky was filled with clouds, and it looked as though it would begin to downpour at any time. In a repeat of the previous day, Elsa's paperwork was interrupted by a knock.

"Your Highness, the Ice Master would like to have a word," Kai's voice said through the door.

Elsa put her head down on her desk.

"Why can't I be left to do my mind-numbing work in peace," she quietly said to herself.

She rose her head back up. "Yes, Kristoff?"

The mountain man didn't wait for Kai to open the door for him, instead barging through it himself.

"Elsa, there's something-,"

"We've been through this before, Bjorgman. You address me as 'your Majesty', like everyone else. Just because you're engaged to my sister, doesn't mean you can be casual with me. Maybe when the two of you are finally married, you can do that."

"Okay, sorry. _Your Majesty_, there's something you should see."

"And what is that?"

"Remember that farmer you talked to yesterday?"

"If there's anything Mr. Evensen needs, he can relay that to the guards I provided him."

"You won't be hearing anything from him anymore. He's gone."

Elsa was confused.

"I'm sorry, what do you mean 'he's gone'?"

"He's vanished. And your two guards are nowhere to be found, either."

"What?"

"That's not even the weirdest part. The whole farm...it's disappeared, completely."

Elsa looked at Kristoff for a moment, then got up from her chair.

"Kai?"

Elsa's servant had already begun to file the papers away for later.

* * *

Looking at the empty expanse of land, one would never be able to tell that there was a farm there just one day before. What once contained a farmer's house, fields with corn, and pastures with cows was now all simply a big stretch of dirt. There wasn't even any grass. Kristoff was right; overnight, everything had simply vanished.

Sven carefully made his way down the hill, carrying both Kristoff and Elsa on his back. Beside them were two more guards, each on horseback. They all turned their heads this way and that, searching for anything out of the ordinary. Kristoff was the first to see the small, green shape that sat a few hundred yards away.

"Look." Kristoff pointed to the shape.

"What could it be?" said Elsa.

"Only one way to find out. C'mon Sven."

The reindeer picked up his pace, now almost sprinting towards the shape, with the guards following closely behind him. As they got closer, they could see why the shape had a green tinge to it; it was the familiar color of an Arendelle guard's uniform. The man wearing it was one of the guards Elsa had left with Lukas the day prior.

Sven came to a stop in front of the man, letting Kristoff and Elsa dismount him. Elsa walked up to the guard, and knelt down next to him. He was still alive, sitting in a fetal position and staring ahead at nothing as he slowly rocked back and forth.

"What happened here? Where's Mr. Evensen and your fellow guard?" the queen said.

"They were taken," replied the guard.

"What do you mean?"

"They took me too, but they put me back."

"Where did they take you? Who took you?"

"Them."

"Who's 'them'?"

The guard fell silent.

"_Who is 'them'?"_

He ignored Elsa, continuing to stare ahead. She got up and turned back to Kristoff.

"I thought you said there wasn't anyone here when you first found the place like this."

"There wasn't, I swear. He must have gotten here when I went back to the castle to get you."

Elsa motioned to the guards still on their horses.

"Bring him back to the castle infirmary and have him looked over."

Once they had settled the guard safely onto one of the horses, Elsa watched as they galloped off, up the hill and out of sight.

"We should get going, too. Looks like it's going to rain soon."

Just as Kristoff finished his sentence, they felt small drops of water fall from the sky. After a few seconds, it grew into steady rainfall. Kristoff and Elsa climbed back onto Sven, and were on their way. Elsa conjured up a large umbrella of ice to keep the three of them dry as they headed back towards town.

Arendelle's queen hoped that these strange events were isolated, and this would be the end of it. But somehow, she doubted that.


	3. Chapter 3

"I have looked him over, and I've found absolutely nothing wrong."

"All right. Thank you."

"It was no problem at all, your Majesty."

The royal physician gave a short bow, then left the room.

Elsa stood near the bed in the infirmary, looking at the guard. The doctor was right; he didn't appear to be physically harmed in any way. But he still didn't quite look right; he sat on the bed, rocking to-and-fro, with that same blank look he had on his face back in that empty field.

Elsa cleared her throat, then spoke.

"What's your name?"

The queen felt a bit embarrassed for asking, but she continued.

"I'm sorry, I should have already known your name by now, but there are so many guards...it's hard to keep track."

The guard remained where he was, giving no response.

"Whatever happened out there...it must not have been pleasant. That's why I've decided to relieve you of your duties for the next three days. I hope you will use them to relax and try to recuperate from today's events."

There was still no response from the guard, but he stopped his rocking movements. Elsa took a step closer.

"It may be your job to protect me, but as your queen, it's _my_ job to ensure the well-being of every citizen of Arendelle. That includes you."

The guard turned to look at Elsa, his green eyes staring into her own blue ones. Without breaking eye contact, he got up from the bed and walked over to her. He was about half a foot taller than Elsa. She now felt a bit apprehensive, like he might lunge at her at any moment.

"Johann," he said.

"...I beg your pardon?"

"My name. Johann."

In her peripheral vision, Elsa could see that his fists were clenched. The guard, Johann, continued to stare at her for a few more seconds, clenching and unclenching his hands, over and over. But nothing else happened.

Elsa watched the guard turn away from her and walk out of the infirmary. After he left her sight, she let the small bit of ice magic, that she was holding in her left hand, dissipate.

* * *

Johann walked through the front door of the modest home he shared with his wife and two children. His son and daughter looked up from the building blocks they were playing with, and saw that their father had returned. The boy got up and ran into the next room to find his mother.

"Mama, papa's home!" he said, his voice trailing out from the kitchen.

"Papa!" his daughter exclaimed, running towards him for a hug. She wrapped her arms around his leg, but Johann made no movement to hug her back like he usually did.

Johann's wife, Maila, walked out into the main living area, their son beside her.

"See, I told you!" said the boy to his mother.

Maila went to her husband and embraced him, then followed it up with a quick kiss. Just like with his daughter, Johann didn't return the affection.

"Oh Johann, I missed you. But why are you home so early? The children and I weren't expecting you for another week."

"Got a vacation," he replied.

His wife surveyed him, a look of concern on her face.

"Sweetheart, is something wrong? Are you all right?"

"Fine."

"Are you sure? You look a little pale."

"Just fine, I'm fine."

Maila looked at him, not completely convinced. But she brushed it aside and smiled.

"Well, I just finished making some soup. I'll go grab it, and the three of you can set the table. And then we can all have a nice family meal together."

Maila headed back into the kitchen to fetch their lunch. After making sure she was gone, Johann went over to the drawer and opened it. After he found the fillet knife, he picked it up, then looked back at his children, still in the room.

"Papa?"

Johann just stared.

* * *

Standing outside the house, Elsa could see the efficiency of her guards. They had already set up a perimeter around the small building, keeping all of the townspeople away from it. Most of them didn't want to stick around anyway, after what had happened.

At some point in the afternoon, Arendelle's citizens saw Johann walk outside the front door of his house, holding his wife's decapitated head in his hand and a fillet knife in the other. He held it up for the terrified villagers to see, as he screamed at them all in an unknown language. It took a full five minutes before Arendelle guards arrived, taking down their former comrade with two musket rounds to the head.

As Elsa looked at the bloody scene, Captain Byron of the Arendelle Guard walked over to her. He was separated from the rest of the guards by the gloves he wore; the Arendelle symbol on them was blue, different from the usual green that a standard guard would wear.

"Your Majesty."

"How many died?" Elsa asked.

"Counting Johann himself, four in total."

The murderer's corpse had already been removed from the area, but Elsa watched as several guards carried three more bodies out of the house, wrapped in white sheets. One body was adult-sized, and the other two child-sized. Her eyes lingered on the two smaller ones, as she shook her head in disbelief.

"How old were they, captain?"

"The boy was 8, the girl, 5."

Elsa couldn't stop a tear from rolling down her cheek.

"So young...", her voice shook.

She breathed deeply and composed herself, stifling any further emotion.

"How was Johann before all this, Byron? Before he was 'taken', as he put it?"

"Quite ordinary, my Queen. He was a bit of a family man, actually. I never would have thought he'd be capable of such a horrid act."

They were both quiet for almost 30 seconds, before Byron broke the awkward silence.

"There is something we think you should see, inside the house," the captain said.

After he led Elsa inside, he indicated the far end of the living room. On the wall was groups of weird symbols, drawn in blood. Their design was reminiscent of Egyptian hieroglyphics, but there was an otherworldly look to them.

"What is this?" the queen asked, wrinkling her nose from the strong odor.

"Johann must have written it out after he killed his family. We haven't been able to determine what exactly these things mean, but they don't correspond to any language I've ever heard of. Bit odd though, some of the townspeople said they heard him scream a bunch of words in a strange tongue."

"What did he say?"

"No idea, the people I talked to said that he was speaking far too quickly for them to pick any words out. But I'm willing to bet that whatever he said, was the same thing written on this wall."

Elsa put her hand up to her chin and thought for a moment, studying the lines, curves, and angles of the bizarre pictogram. She then turned back to the captain.

"I'll need an exact illustration of these symbols, finished and delivered to me by the end of today."

"As you wish, your Highness."

With that, Elsa walked past the captain and out of the house.

As she walked down the cobblestone path back to Arendelle's castle, Elsa felt her first twinge of guilt. She couldn't help but feel partly responsible for these events. Just one day before, there had been an entire family that lived in that house. And now, they were all dead.

Elsa wondered what Johann's son and daughter must have thought, when they saw their own father attack them with a knife. She wondered what Johann's wife must have thought when she walked in and saw the man she loved, covered in blood, standing over the dead bodies of their children.

Elsa was roused from her dark thoughts when she noticed the small, frosty path stretching all the way from the house, to where she stood. She still wasn't fully in control of her powers, it seemed. Elsa sighed as she waved it away, making it disappear with a flick of her wrist.

No matter what, she needed to get to the bottom of this.


	4. Chapter 4

Elsa stood near the top rung of the ladder, looking carefully at each volume that sat in the tall bookcase. Her sister, Anna, sat cross-legged nearby in a velvet chair, flipping through an encyclopedia. The sketch of the off-looking pictogram from Johann's house, from the day before, lay on a footstool at Anna's side. Elsa moved her eyes along the spines of the books, then turned to look at Anna.

"Any luck?"

"Nope, not yet," Anna replied, flipping back her strawberry-blonde pigtails.

"Keep looking. If you don't find anything in that one, try the next in that series."

"Will do."

For the next few minutes, the only sounds that could be heard in the expansive library were the flipping of pages and movement of books, in and out of the shelves. As Elsa looked through one book (entitled _A History of Pre-Unified Corona_), Anna broke the silence.

"You know, we haven't really been in this part of the castle in quite a while. The last time I was in here, was when Mama and Papa...were...still..."

Anna's voice trailed off, realizing the old wounds she just opened. Even though it had been a little over four years since their parents died, both sisters still missed them.

Elsa stopped reading for a moment, glancing over at the big, cushioned, purple couch that sat at the far wall. As she looked at the piece of furniture, memories came rushing back to her; memories of her and Anna as children, snuggling up to their mother as she read stories to them in her soft, soothing voice. Even after Anna's accident, she still took the time to read to her daughters, although she did it with each of them separately by that point.

Anna looked up at her sister and noticed her staring at the couch, a subtle, melancholy look on her face.

"Elsa, I...I'm sorry for bringing it up. I miss them both, too."

The queen closed her eyes.

"It's all right Anna..."

She opened her eyes again.

This was not the time for nostalgia; there were more important things at the moment, and Elsa knew she needed to focus on them. Arendelle's safety was potentially at stake.

Elsa closed _A History of Pre-Unified Corona_ and put it back in its spot on the shelf. Right after she was about to draw out another book, the main doors to the library opened. Kai walked through them, holding an envelope in his right hand.

"Hey Kai!" Anna said, as she smiled and gave a quick wave.

"My Lady," he replied back with a nod.

Kai headed over to his Queen, and as she stepped down off the ladder, he handed her the envelope. Elsa looked at its wax seal, and immediately recognized it as the insignia from Captain Byron's ring. She undid the seal, opening the letter.

_Your Majesty,_

_Found the farmer and our missing guard, down at that farm you were at a few days ago. Found something else, too. You'll want to come down here and see._

_-Captain Byron, Arendelle Royal Guard_

"Thank you for the letter, Kai. You may resume your regular duties."

Kai nodded and headed back towards the door, as Elsa turned to look at Anna.

"I'm needed down at the vegetable fields. I need you to stay here and continue to look for any leads. Those symbols look really old, so researching ancient history should be our best bet."

"All right, I'll do my best. I hope everything turns out okay on your end."

"Thank Anna. I should be back soon."

Anna stood up and gave her sister a quick hug, then sat back down, resuming her scholarly efforts.

As Elsa walked out of the library, she wondered what she was going to find when she returned to that now-empty farm. So far, every other thing she had been called out to see was something horrible; she doubted this latest discovery would be any different.

* * *

Captain Byron removed the sheets of both corpses to show Elsa what had happened to them. The bodies' clothing had been removed; they were mutilated in the exact same manner as the cattle. Both the deceased farmer and the second guard left with him were drained of blood; their internal organs, removed; their eyes and tongue, gone. Even their genitals were missing, cauterized wounds marking where they once were.

It seemed more disturbing to Elsa to see humans dissected in this way. The dead cattle had only given her some sense of disgust, but this was something different. She wanted to vomit, but for some reason, she couldn't.

"What was the 'something else' you found, Captain?"

Byron motioned for one of the other guards present. He came forward, holding two objects, one in each hand. He handed them off to his captain, who, in turn, held them forward for Elsa to observe.

"We found them buried in the dirt, right next to where the corpses were."

The objects were circular plates, made of precious metal; one was gold, the other silver. They were both the same size, that of a standard dinner plate. Elsa reached out and took the silver one from Byron's hand. Despite its thinness, it felt heavier than it appeared. However, the strangest thing about both plates was the odd symbol carved on them: the plates' symbols were identical (albeit smaller) to the pattern that had appeared in the very same field just two days before.

Elsa looked at the angles on the plate, and though she was going to properly measure them when she could, she already knew they would all be 33 degrees.

The queen handed the plate back to the captain, and looked down at the two bodies again.

"Does Mr. Evensen have any next-of-kin?"

"He does not. He never married or had any children, and both his parents passed away decades ago."

"And this guard...I'm very sorry Captain, this is yet another man whose name I have neglected to memorize."

"Bjorn Alstan, your Majesty."

"Yes, Mr. Alstan. I remember now. What about him? What family does he have?"

"He has a wife, and one son. They live near the docks."

Elsa winced on the inside.

"I can be the one to break the news to his wife, if you so wish, my Queen."

"I need to be there when it happens, Captain. I feel like I'm partly to blame for this."

"You are under no obligation to-"

"I insist."

The captain paused, but knew that he would never be able to change the mind of Arendelle's monarch.

"And what of these plates, your Highness? Shall we melt them down?"

"No. I want these brought back to the castle, I'm going to study them further once I have the chance."

"Of course, my Lady."

He beckoned the guard again, and handed the plates off to him. The guard put each one into its own sizable, leather carrying case, then attached them both to a saddle of one of the horses.

"You should know...your cabinet has requested a meeting with you at the castle, tonight. They want information on the events of the previous two days, and a solution from you."

Elsa really didn't want to meet with them, but she knew it was her duty as Queen.

"...tell them I will meet with them, in the castle's council room, at 10:00 PM sharp."

She sighed. This was going to be a long day.

* * *

Elsa sat at the end of the long table in the council room. On either side of her sat the 5 members of her cabinet; the minister of agriculture; the minister of finance; Arendelle's ambassador; the attorney general; and Captain Byron, the minister of defence.

While Captain Byron was already familiar with most of the unexplainable events that had recently occurred, his fellow cabinet members had only just been informed by their Queen.

The agriculture minister was the first to voice his disapproval.

"Mr. Evensen's farm was one of Arendelle's largest providers of vegetables and livestock. This little incident is going to adversely affect our food supply. We could very well have a famine on our hands."

"That will not be a problem. We are on good terms with Corona, we can easily import more seeds and cattle from them to replace what was lost. I will use money from my own family's assets, if I have to," the Queen replied.

"And how can you be certain the kingdom of Corona will even export to us after they find out what has occurred?" Arendelle's ambassador interjected.

"I quite agree," said the attorney general. "This sort of thing is unprecedented, and it certainly will not make us look favorable to neighboring kingdoms."

"We will be fine. None of this reflects poorly on us as a nation," the Queen replied. She was beginning to display hints of stress, her left hand nearly balled into a fist.

"It reflects poorly on you as a ruler. That, in turn, makes all of Arendelle suffer," said the finance minister.

While the other cabinet members were all in their mid-forties to late-fifties, the minister of finance was by far the oldest person there. He was in his late-seventies, almost completely bald with bits of gray hair clinging to both sides of his head. His body was tall and thin, and his grey-brown eyes looked emotionally cold.

"You have only been our monarch for slightly over a year, and in my opinion, you have done an insufficient job of looking after this country's interests," he said accusingly.

Captain Byron interrupted him. "I object to that statement, and I believe you are making unfair judgements that have little to do with the situation at hand. Personally, I believe Queen Elsa has brought prosperity to Arendelle. We now export almost twice as much ice as before, and our tourism industry has never been bigger."

The old man turned to Byron.

"Oh really? I am being unfair, am I? According to you, she can't even remember the names of her own Royal Guard. Was it not you yourself who said that you needed to remind her of the unfortunate officer found dead in that field?"

Elsa and Byron's eyes briefly met. The captain was the one to look away, a feeling of guilt forming in his mind.

The finance minister looked back to Elsa.

"How are we to trust your judgement when, a relatively short time ago, you froze this entire country and ran off to the mountains? Our people very nearly froze to death, because of you."

"That is irrelevant to-"

"_Irrelevant? You almost killed us all, 'your Majesty'._"

"That is _enough, _minister_._ I am sending a letter to the king of Corona first thing tomorrow, requesting an import," Elsa declared. She stood up from her seat.

"This meeting is adjourned, gentlemen. You are all dismissed."

The cabinet members got up from their seats, all slowly filing out of the room. Captain Byron looked briefly at his Queen, trying to wordlessly apologize to her before he stepped out the door.

The finance minister was the last member in the room. Before he left, he walked over to Elsa. He stared at her with those callous eyes of his, and narrowed them.

"_Your father would be ashamed of you_,", he said in a harsh whisper.

As he turned to leave, Elsa thought she heard him mutter "Witch" under his breath. She watched as he shut the door behind him.

Elsa reached back and undid her bun, letting her platinum-blonde hair fall down past her shoulders. She sat back down in her chair and sighed deeply, her head in her hands. She remained there for the next few minutes as a light layer of ice began to form over the ceiling of the council room. Elsa knew it was there, but she at the moment she didn't care.

She was about to get up and leave, when she heard a quiet knock on the door.

"Elsa?"

It was Anna's voice.

"Come in."

Anna opened the door and walked in, carrying the pictogram sketch in her hand.

"I just got into the hall when I saw all those cabinet members walk out. Rough meeting, huh?"

"That's a bit of an understatement, Anna. But enough about that, did you find out anything about those symbols while I was gone?"

"Well, sort of...," Anna said.

"Meaning?"

"Well, I don't know what this thing says, but I think I've figured out the closest language to it."

"Which is?"

"Ancient Sumerian," said Anna.

"What? Sumerian? What was that doing scrawled in blood on the wall inside a house?"

"Well, like I said, Sumerian is the _closest_ thing to it. I double-checked to make sure, but there's no mistaking it. The lines and curves of that language correspond pretty closely to this sketch."

"But if that's the case, where do we go from here?", Elsa thought aloud.

Anna looked at the floor, thinking to herself. After a moment, she spoke.

"Why don't you try going out to the mountains and talk to Grand Pabbie tomorrow? He's pretty old, maybe he might know something more about this sort of thing."

"That's a good idea, Anna. I'll...I'll make sure to do that tomorrow..."

Elsa gently took the sketch out of her sister's hand and stared at a random spot on the table, remaining where she was. Anna stood there, unsure of what was going on.

"Elsa...is everything okay?"

The queen closed her eyes as a single tear rolled down her face.

Elsa felt two hands wrap around her arm, as Anna helped her up out of her chair. When she was fully standing and facing Anna, the princess threw her arms around her sister, pulling her close for a hug.

"You're a great sister, and a wonderful queen. And I'm sure that both Mama and Papa are watching over you right now, and they're really proud of you," Anna whispered.

Elsa continued to embrace her sister, and let her tears come.


	5. Chapter 5

After finishing writing the letter, Elsa put it into its envelope, then pressed down on the wax with her ring, giving it her official seal. She moved up from her desk and over to the open window.

Arendelle's queen took a moment to admire the beautiful sunrise, and then, with a slight movement of her hand, created the magical construct she needed. Aside from color, the chilled creation was a perfect replica of a golden eagle, one of Elsa's favorite animals. It was very detailed, right down to its eyes and feathers. It even had functioning eyelids, blinking every few seconds.

Elsa could have sent the letter via boat, but this way was going to be much faster. She handed her letter to her little delivery bird, and it extended one of its feet to take it from her.

"This is for the king of Corona. It is an import request, and I want you to deliver it directly to him at his castle. Do you understand?"

The bird nodded to Elsa, indicating its comprehension of her words.

"Good. When you arrive, I want you to wait there until he's written his own letter in reply to my own. Then I want you to take his message and fly it back here to me. Do you understand?"

The bird nodded again.

"Then off you go," said Elsa.

It leapt from the windowsill and took flight, its wings beating against the air just like the real animal it was based off of. The queen watched the ice eagle fly off, clutching her letter in its talons. It flew faster than any real bird was capable of, until it was just a speck on the horizon.

She turned from the window, went back to her desk and stored away her papers and pen, then left the study, heading off to her bedroom a few doors down.

As she opened the door to her room, Elsa saw the dress prepared for her, neatly laid out on her bed. The outfit came with a cape, and the whole thing was almost entirely black, with dark-grey embroidery. The embroidery was of the same flowery design that adorned Elsa and Anna's coronation dresses.

Elsa didn't want to put this outfit on, because she knew what it was intended for; it was a funeral dress, and Elsa had three of them to attend on this day.

She picked up the dark clothes, moved behind her vanity screen, and sighed as she can began to get dressed.

* * *

If it weren't for Elsa and Fridolv, one of her guards, there would not be anyone attending Lukas Evensen's funeral except for the priest and the four grave diggers.

Even in her isolation as a child, Elsa still had her parents and multiple servants to interact with. But this man, Lukas...he had nobody. Elsa felt sorry for the farmer. She couldn't imagine what it would be like to literally have no one in your life; no family, no friends. She wondered how he went on, day after day, year after year, working on that farm with no one else around.

Elsa thought about her own family and friends; Anna, Kristoff, Sven, Olaf, Marshmallow, even Kai and Gerda. She was very fortunate to have so many who cared for her.

The queen used her magic to form an ice rose in her hand. She then tossed it on top of the coffin. With misty eyes and a heavy heart, Elsa watched as the casket was carefully lowered into the ground by the grave diggers, each of them grasping a rope. When it was all done, they began to toss dirt into the hole with their shovels.

Elsa turned and began to walk away, Fridolv following along in her wake. They were both off to their next funeral.

* * *

Unlike Lukas, the funeral for Johann was attended by two guests; an elderly couple. Under more ordinary circumstances, there would have been a full ceremony done by Arendelle's Royal Guard to honor their fallen comrade. But in this case, there was none; murderers did not get that sort of privilege at their funeral.

Elsa watched Johann, inside the casket, get lowered into his grave, just like Lukas had been. Despite his crimes, she couldn't help but feel a slight amount of pity for him. Obviously, whatever had happened to Johann on that farm had changed him for the worse; perhaps it had influenced his later actions in some way. Elsa didn't feel _too _bad for him, though; there was no excuse for murder, especially that of innocent children.

As she turned and began to move away from the burial, the elderly man and woman walked up to her.

"Your Majesty," said the man. He swallowed, then continued.

"We...we would like to express our deepest apologies to you. Our son has sullied the good name of your Royal Guard."

"It's fine..." Elsa began.

"No...no, it isn't fine. _Our son is a cold-blooded murderer_," the man replied, his voice cracking.

His wife began to cry, burying her face into her husband's chest.

"Oh Harald, our own son..."

"I know, Evelin, I know..." the old man said, on the verge of tears himself. He looked back to his Queen.

"I-I'm sorry your Majesty, please excuse us."

"Of course," said Elsa.

She wished she could say something, anything, to relieve them of their sadness, but there was nothing she could do.

Elsa and Fridolv moved past the old couple, on their way to the third and final funeral.

* * *

This was the funeral Elsa was dreading the most. It was the funeral of Johann's wife, Maila, and their two children.

Standing at the back, behind everyone else, Elsa could see the numerous guests attending the solemn ceremony. There were men and women, boys and girls, people of all ages, from the old to the young. Maila appeared to have quite the extended family.

Elsa listened to the priest perform the proper funeral rites, the sound of his words mixed with the quiet weeping of the many attendees. When the coffins began to be lowered into the earth, entire bouquets of roses, made of snow and ice, started to form on top of each one. The guests all looked behind them and saw Elsa with her hands extended, magical frost gently flowing from them towards the graves.

If any of the guests had looked closely enough, they would have noticed that their Queen had frozen tears in her eyes.

* * *

Captain Byron stood with Elsa near Arendelle's docks. The sun was beginning to set, casting an orange glow over the fjord. The two looked at the house that stood before them.

"Are you sure you want to go through with this? I can do it for you, if you wish."

"No, this is something I need to do. It's my responsibility, not yours," Elsa replied.

Byron watched her walk to the front door and knock. From inside the house, Elsa heard footsteps move towards the door. It opened, showing the woman who lived inside.

When the woman saw who had knocked on her door, a look of surprise came over her face.

"Oh! Y-your Majesty!" she said, curtsying.

Elsa was silent, trying to muster up courage.

"What brings you to my humble home, my Lady?"

Elsa took a deep breath, then began to speak.

From afar, the captain watched as Elsa broke the unfortunate news to the woman, of her husband's untimely death. Byron saw the woman's expression go from a nervous smile, to one of sadness and anger.

"I am very sorry for your loss, ma'am. I...I know what it's like to lose people you care about," said Elsa, in an attempt to comfort the recently-widowed woman.

The queen saw the woman's raised hand, she knew what was going to happen and could have easily stopped it, had she so wished. But Elsa let it come.

A loud _smack_ could be heard as the woman slapped Elsa across the face. She moved her head with it, minimizing the impact of the woman's hand. But still, it stung. A red mark formed on Elsa's face.

The woman's eyes were filled with hate.

"What the hell do you know? You were born an heir to the goddamn throne, you don't know about struggle."

The woman tried to prevent the angry tears from coming, and failed.

"You let my husband die. Weselton's Duke was right..._you're a monster._"

Hearing the commotion, the woman's son came into view, coming up and standing behind her.

"Mama?"

The woman looked at the small child, then back at Elsa one last time.

_"Get away from my home, witch. You're no queen of mine._"

With that, she slammed the door.

Byron ran up to Elsa.

"Are you all right, your Majesty?"

He began to reach for the door, but she stopped him.

"I'm fine, captain."

"Assaulting the monarch is a very serious crime, that woman could be facing imprisonment for life. I'll go in there right now and arrest her-"

"No. Her boy has already lost his father, he doesn't need to lose his mother too."

"But my Queen-"

"Let it go, captain," said Elsa, turning away from the house and beginning to walk back to the castle.

Byron, incredulous, looked from Elsa to the house, then back again.

"B-but..."

He quickly followed after her.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I am. That woman was probably right, anyway."

Byron could not think of any response to this, and so, the two continued along to the castle for the next few minutes in silence. It wasn't until they were only about a mile from their destination, that he decided to speak again.

"Your Majesty, I...I would like to apologize for yesterday, for that whole ordeal with the finance minister. When I told him about your forgetting of names, it was something that I simply made a passing mention of. It was not my place to make offhand comments like that, and I am sorry."

"You are not to blame for any of that. It's my own fault for being so forgetful of these things. Perhaps I should simply start making everyone wear nametags."

Byron stifled his urge to smile. He wasn't sure if Elsa was being serious, or that was some sort of dry humor he just heard.

"And as for that...errand you say you have in the forest tonight? Are you sure you don't want a guard to be sent along with you?" the captain asked.

"I am sure. There won't be any need for guards, when I'll just be seeing some old friends," the queen replied cryptically.

Captain Byron was curious about Elsa's ambiguous statement, but he knew better than to push the matter any further.

* * *

It had been quite a while since Elsa had last been in this part of Arendelle. In fact, she was still a child at the time.

Elsa stood in the middle of the Valley of the Living Rock, the domain of creatures she had only spoken to once before. Around her, the rocks began to move about, rolling this way and that, until they transformed into their true forms; stout little trolls, with bodies of stone and clothes made of moss. Among them was a troll that stood out from the rest, a great mane of grass surrounding his head and neck. He wore a moss cape, with little yellow crystals hanging from his shirt.

Despite the time that had passed, Elsa still instantly recognized this troll.

"Grand Pabbie?" she said.

"Ah, Elsa, my dear! It's been ages since I last saw you! I remember when you were only twice my height!" Pabbie cheerfully replied.

"Yes, it has been some time."

"What brings you back out here, Elsa? But wait, I guess I should be calling you 'your Majesty' now, shouldn't I?"

"I...we can drop the formalities, for now."

As much as she wanted to talk to Grand Pabbie about old times, she was here on business.

"Listen, Pabbie, there's a few things I need you to take a look at."

Elsa removed the leather satchel from her shoulder, opening it to produce the pictogram sketch, and the two plates dug up from Lukas' field. Upon seeing the different symbols, Pabbie's eyes widened. He then turned to his brethren.

"Everyone...if you could allow the Queen and me some privacy. We have important matters to discuss."

The other trolls looked at each other, whispered a few words, then all turned back into their rock forms, rolling off to another part of the valley. After they had all left, Pabbie turned back to Elsa.

"Do you know what language this is?" he said.

"No idea. My sister Anna looked at it, and she said the closest similarity she could find was the Sumerian language."

"Yes, well, she was close. But this particular language predates even Sumer."

"What do you mean? What societies existed before that?"

"There is much of history that has been lost to time. Human civilization goes much farther back than you think."

"Farther back? How far?"

"Elsa...you may not be aware of this, but there was once a small landmass near the middle of the Indian Ocean, roughly the size of our own fair Arendelle. And on that land, sat a kingdom known as _Ilt-n'un._"

Pabbie twirled his hands a bit, casting a spell. A map appeared in the air, depicting the Indian Ocean and some surrounding lands.

"If the records I read about this land are correct, it existed from the 15th to the 5th millennium BC. After that, some unknown catastrophe occurred, causing the kingdom to crumble and sink beneath the waves."

Pabbie moved his hands about again, showing the land from an aerial view, disappearing into the sea.

"And after that..."

Another twitch of his fingers produce a small dot on the map, as it moved over the water, up towards more northern regions.

"...the few survivors from _Ilt-n'un _managed to head north to what you would call the Mesopotamian region, where they set up a new civilization around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. That new society is what we both know as ancient Sumer."

Pabbie clasped his palms together, as the map phased out. Elsa could hardly believe the history lesson she had just received.

"How do you know all this, Pabbie?"

"When I was a young man, I used to be an advisor to Ptolemy II in Egypt. He allowed me to spend much of my time in the Library of Alexandria, and that information was something I found recorded onto a scroll. Shame the whole thing went up in flames, there were things in there that even I never got around to reading."

"Well, I suppose that sheds light on the origin of this language. But what do these things say?"

Pabbie looked at the gold and silver plates, then the sketch, all placed neatly on the ground. He grimaced.

"That sketch of yours, it says '_suspended in the heavens, above'._ The ancient Greeks had a word that meant something similar, _metéora_."

"And what about these plates? What do these words say?"

Pabbie looked at his feet.

"_What do they say, Pabbie?_"

"Those aren't words on those plates, Elsa. They're prime numbers. On the gold plate, from left to right, are the numbers 11, 829, 127, 2269, and 53. On the silver, from left to right, the numbers are 419, 3833, and 1693."

"What...why prime numbers? And why those numbers, specifically? What _are _these plates for, Pabbie?"

"Beacons."

Elsa furrowed her brow at the troll.

"Beacons? As in, for signaling?"

"Yes, Elsa."

Pabbie stretched his arms and yawned. But it looked odd, as though he was just faking it.

"I'm sorry Elsa, I'm very old, and not even us trolls live forever. I myself only have a good 30 years or so left..."

He turned away from Elsa, beginning to walk off.

"Pabbie, wait! I need to know where these things came from! Who built them?"

The old troll stopped moving, as he looked straight ahead.

"Pabbie, _who built them?!_"

Without turning to look at her, he answered.

"None of us trolls did. No human did either, for that matter."

There was a few seconds of silence.

"If I were you, Elsa, I would destroy those plates, and that sketch. For Arendelle's sake. You don't want those things hanging around this area for too long."

He cleared his throat.

"I'm sorry, your Majesty. If you'll excuse me..."

Elsa watched Pabbie go back into his rock form, and roll off to join his family.

* * *

Standing at her bedroom window, looking over the fjord, Elsa could see the sky. It was partly cloudy that night, glimpses of stars peeking through the small gaps in the clouds. Down below, in the main town area, slept the citizens of Arendelle. It was very quiet, with only the sound of the wind blowing through the trees and rustling their leaves.

Holding the two plates, one in each hand, Elsa let her magic flow through her hands and into the objects. They each took on a crystallized, brittle apearance. Then, they collapsed, crumbling into small ice crystals. Elsa dissolved each little crystal until nothing was left but bits of frost. The queen then took the pictogram sketch in her hands, and repeated the process.

As she watched the tiny, tiny crystals get carried away by the wind, she reflected on her meeting with Grand Pabbie. She knew there were things he wasn't telling her, things that made him uncomfortable to even think about.

Elsa felt frustrated. She was still left without any answers, only more questions.


	6. Chapter 6

Anna slept beside her beloved fiancé, Kristoff. Despite the mountain man's snoring, the princess never had problems falling asleep next to him.

She lay on her stomach, her eyes closed and mouth open. A bit of drool leaked from her mouth and onto the pillow, as the sound of her quiet snores were drowned out by Kristoff's.

Suddenly, Anna felt a sensation within her, as though she were floating. She thought of herself levitating up, out of the large bed, and towards the ceiling. Then, she imagined she passed right through it, phasing through the roof of the castle and out into the night sky.

It was then that the dream turned to a nightmare.

Anna opened her eyes. Her surroundings had changed instantly, from her tranquil royal bedroom to something else entirely.

The room she was now in was entirely white; white floor, white walls, white ceiling. She sat in some kind of a chair, also white, looking up at about a 45-degree angle.

Anna realized something else was wrong; she couldn't move any part of her body at all. She couldn't speak, or swallow, or even blink. All she could do was stare ahead at the blinding whiteness.

In her peripheral vision, Anna saw something strange, something terrifying.

There were six beings who had suddenly appeared in the room with her. Out of the corner of her eye, Anna saw one of them begin to move closer to where she was. The thing had a disturbing movement to it; it walked elegantly, yet awkwardly at the same time. It was unlike anything she had seen before.

As the being came into her full line of vision, she got a good look at it.

The creature was humanoid, thin, around four feet tall, with smooth, grey skin. Including the thumbs, it had four fingers on each hand, and its limbs were thin and spindly. The thing had no hair anywhere on its body; it didn't have genitalia of any kind, either.

Looking at its head, Anna could see that it appeared too large for the rest of its body. There were no ears to speak of, with only two small holes functioning as nostrils and a thin slit serving as its mouth.

However, the entity's most disturbing feature, by far, was its eyes. They were large, almond-shaped, and completely black. They were devoid of any sort of empathy or warmth.

Anna lay there, still paralyzed, as the thing touched her face with its right hand, its long, thin fingers resting softly on her cheek; they felt cold. It moved its head closer to her face and looked at her with those horrible eyes.

As its eyes peered into Anna's own, she began to feel a wave of different emotions move through her; anger, hatred, joy, curiosity, pity, love, confusion, fear. She felt every emotion come and go within seconds of each other, as though they were being sorted through and categorized.

The entity continued to stare as Anna began to recall memories in her head; a memory of her as a newborn infant, looking up at the faces of her Mama and Papa; a memory of dancing alone in the castle halls, singing to herself; a memory of looking down at the ground, standing beside the gravestones of her parents.

Another memory came into her head, the night where she and Elsa built a snowman together, and the same night where their relationship changed forever.

Anna felt discomfort over what this thing was doing to her. It was bringing up her most nostalgic, pained memories, ones that it had no right to dredge up. She hated the creature. She wanted to strike it, gouge at those unfeeling eyes that would not stop looking at her.

When Anna felt like she couldn't take it anymore, it finally removed its hand from her face and stepped back. However, it still did not take its eyes off her. Instead, the other five creatures, who had been standing at the side of the room all this time, moved forward to stare at Anna as well.

The six of them were all identical in appearance, right down to the eyes.

Steel restraints sprang up from the sides of the chair, closing around Anna's arms and legs and binding them. Then, eight spidery, metal instruments slowly folded out from underneath the chair to hang over Anna. Each instrument had a bladed, sharp end to it, as though it was some kind of device made for surgery.

It sprang to life, loudly whirring. The creatures looked on, indifferent, as the spindly metal arms moved downwards, closer to Anna.

Her eyes widened, and she realized that she now had some control over her face. It didn't do her any good though, as she still couldn't move her body; even if she was able to, it wouldn't matter due to the restraints that held her down.

The devices moved over her chest, and as they were about to cut into her flesh, Anna screamed.

* * *

"Anna! Anna!"

Kristoff bent over his fiancée, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her. She was screaming and thrashing about in her sleep.

"_Anna! WAKE UP!_"

She suddenly stopped, and her eyes shot open.

Anna sat up a bit and looked around at her familiar bedroom, then over at the man she was engaged to.

"...Kristoff?"

She looked at him for a few seconds more, then fell into his arms. As Kristoff held her, she began to sob, loudly and uncontrollably, into his chest.


	7. Chapter 7

Elsa and Kristoff stood near the princess, both with worried expressions on their faces. After his wife-to-be had woken up screaming in terror, Kristoff didn't know what to do, and so he took her to see Elsa, telling her what had occurred.

Anna sat in a chair near Elsa's bed, a blanket wrapped around her. A small table sat in front of her; on it lay a cup of tea and a small plate with some chocolates on it. Normally, Anna would have stuffed her face with the chocolate, but right now she was holding just one piece in her hand, taking small bites. Every now and then she would take a sip of the tea, but overall, her sweet tooth was severely lacking that night.

Anna's eyes were still red from all the crying she had only just finished minutes ago. Aside from uttering Kristoff's name when she woke from her ghastly dream, she had not spoken since that point, instead only continuing to sob until she sat down in the chair and had some time to compose herself.

Seeing an opportunity, Elsa moved forward and gently placed her hand on her sister's shoulder.

"Anna...what happened? It's not like you to have nightmares..."

The princess just sat there, continuing to absent-mindedly nibble on some chocolate, while she used one hand to keep the blanket wrapped around her.

Elsa was confused at her sister's silence. Anna was usually much more talkative.

"Please, Anna. Tell me what happened. If I don't know, I can't help you at all."

Anna swallowed the last piece of chocolate, and shut her eyes. She breathed deeply.

"...Elsa...could I stay here for the rest of the night? I just...I don't think I can go back to my room right now..."

Elsa looked over at Kristoff, who shrugged; he seemed fine with it.

"Well, all right, Anna. But you have to promise that you'll tell me everything when you wake up."

Anna moved over to a big, soft couch that sat up against the far wall, directly across from the foot of Elsa's bed. As she lay down, she pushed the blanket aside to make a space next to her. She patted the cushion, motioning for Kristoff to come and lay beside her.

"Elsa...I mean, your Majesty, do you mind if I stayed here too?"

"That's fine, I suppose."

Kristoff gave a short bow, then moved over to where Anna was on the couch and laid down. As he did so, Anna immediately pushed herself onto him and laid her head on his chest, her right hand grasping his left. After her horrid dream, it felt nice to be wrapped in the ice harvester's arms. Anna gave a yawn, as she nuzzled her head against Kristoff.

"Good night, my love," she whispered, her eyes shut, already half-asleep.

Kristoff kissed the top of her head.

"Good night Anna."

Elsa watched as Kristoff's eyes slowly shut, and soon, both he and Anna were back to their usual snoring. She couldn't help but smile a bit as she watched the couple sleep.

The queen needed to stay up until Anna awakened again, so she could catch her before she tried to leave without telling her about her dream. It wouldn't be too hard; the sunrise was only around three hours away.

Elsa moved to her bookshelf and removed a book; it was a collection of recently-published short stories. As she sat down on her bed, she turned to page 147; the story was entitled "The Man of the Crowd". Elsa began to read, as Anna and Kristoff snored the night away.

* * *

While she slept, Anna didn't encounter those creatures again. But she did have another vision.

She found herself floating over an entire land coated in ice. Somehow, instinctively, Anna knew what she was looking down on; the Earth's southernmost continent, Antarctica. She passed over entire plains of snow, drifting for what seemed like hundreds of miles, until she saw a mountain range on the horizon. Anna floated closer, and as she slowly went over the mountain peaks, she saw what lay on the other side of them.

Beyond the mountains was a vast city. Weird structures of unknown origin covered the landscape. Some structures were spherical, some cubed, some conical. None of them had any visible entrances, and every building was coated in those same odd patterns and lines that composed the unidentified language that Anna had studied.

She stayed over the city for a few more minutes, taking in its strangeness. Then, suddenly, Anna began to float upward. The city grew smaller in her vision as she continued to travel further away. Eventually, Anna was so high up that she was able to make out the entire continent, looking at its white shape bordered by the blue of the sea around it.

Anna went higher and farther away still, until she became the first person ever to see what the Earth looked like from space.

For a second, Anna marveled at its beauty, but as she watched, the planet began to freeze. It was slow at first, but the frost quickly spread. The oceans turned to ice and the land turned to snow.

And then, all at once, the entire world shattered to bits; trillions of little bits of ice, floating in the vacuum of space.

Anna then saw each star, light-years and light-years away, begin to go out. Eventually, none were left, and she floated alone in the blackness.

* * *

When the first faint rays of light from the sun began to peek over the horizon, Kristoff awoke from his slumber and looked at Anna. She was still fast asleep, and she hadn't let go of the mountain man's hand.

Carefully, Kristoff removed her hand from his own, then slipped out from under her. He looked over at Elsa; she had her nose buried in her book, still wide awake.

Without looking up from her story, Elsa said "Take care on your morning deliveries, Kristoff."

"Uh...thanks," he replied.

He moved the blanket back over Anna, kissed her forehead, then nodded to Elsa as he quietly opened the door and left.

Only seconds after Kristoff had left the room, Anna woke up with a start.

* * *

Anna finished the last of her drawing for Elsa, then tossed the pen aside, putting her head in her hands as she began to weep. She thought she was done crying from her ordeal, but seeing her nightmares on paper made the tears well up within her again.

Elsa looked at the drawing, mystified. It depicted the six mysterious beings from Anna's dream, looking down at her while a spidery mechanism poised above her, ready to perform some macabre experiment on her body.

On another part of the paper, Anna had illustrated herself floating above the weird city of cubes and cones, then floating off the whole planet and watching it break apart, being left to drift in the cold darkness of outer space.

Elsa put her arm around her sister, letting her cry into her shoulder. Anna's tears fell onto her dress, giving it some watery stains. At the moment, Elsa didn't care; she only cared about helping her sibling.

"Anna...it'll all be okay. You're safe now.." said Elsa, rubbing Anna's shoulder.

"No...no, it won't be okay. What if they come back? What if they take me again?"

"It was just a dream-"

"It _wasn't_, Elsa. I know it, they let me see those things on purpose."

Elsa looked from her sister back to the sheet of paper. She picked it up in her hands and focused on the six creatures with the almond-shaped eyes.

"Is this 'they'?" said Elsa.

Anna nodded, without looking at her drawing. She shut her eyes.

"This is all because of that pictogram I looked at, isn't it? I found something out that they didn't like," she said.

"Anna, I...whatever's happening to you, it's my fault, not yours. I was the one who asked you to research that thing."

Her sister wiped her eyes and sniffled.

"They're going to come back for me, I know it. What do we do, Elsa? What _can _we do?"

Elsa thought for a moment, then moved from Anna's side to look out the window.

"I'm going to find out what's going on here, Anna. And I know _just_ who to talk to."

* * *

It was nighttime in Arendelle once again.

Elsa moved through the Valley of the Living Rock, until she found the large amount of stones that all lay close to each other. As they all unraveled into their troll forms, Elsa froze each and every one of them instantly, encasing them all in blocks of ice with a flick of her wrist; she would thaw them out when she was done there.

One troll remained unfrozen; their patriarch, Grand Pabbie. He was taken aback at the sudden flash-freezing of his friends.

"Elsa, what is the meaning of-"

"_Shut up._"

Pabbie was sent flying as Elsa blasted him with her magic. As he lay on the ground, disoriented, the queen picked him up by one of his legs. With a quick flash of blue, more magic flew from her hand as a large ice pillar sprang up underneath her feet, lifting the both of them high into the air.

As Pabbie hung upside down, he could see they were well above the treetops of his forest, easily a few hundred feet up.

"Elsa, what are you..." he began.

"You knew something about those things, all along! And because you didn't say anything, Arendelle has lost valuable crops and cattle, six people are now dead, and my own sister was abducted by those things last night!"

"B-but-"

"You know, Pabbie, I don't think even stone would stay intact if it were dropped from this height. _So unless you want to be turned into gravel, I suggest you start talking_."

"N-no, please! You don't know those things, they're horrible-"

Elsa let go of Pabbie, and he shrieked as he began to fall.

Before he had fallen even ten feet, two long arms, constructed out of snow, shot out and caught the troll, pulling him back up to where Elsa was.

"Okay, okay! I-I'll tell you everything! Please, just put me down!"

After they had both descended back and were safely on the ground again, Elsa set Pabbie on the ground, ready to blast him again if he tried anything.

"_Talk_."

Pabbie gulped.

"All right, Elsa. Listen, these creatures, they're...they're exceedingly old."

"How old?"

"Older than you, older than me. Older than the Earth, even."

"And why are they here? What do they want?" Elsa demanded.

Pabbie brought his voice down to a whisper.

"They're here to get something valuable to them, something that will help them further their own plans. They came here from-"

Pabbie screamed as he shot up into the sky.

"_Nnnnoooooooo_! _Help meeeeeeee_!" he screamed, as he was pulled along by some great, unknown force.

The queen, shocked, quickly constructed an ice ceiling far above Pabbie, hoping he would stop when he ran into it. It didn't work; the troll simply phased right through it, as though it wasn't there at all.

One last bloodcurdling screech could be heard from Pabbie, before everything went silent.

Dissolving her construct of ice, Elsa could see that there was nothing past it, no indication of what had grabbed the troll or where he had went.

Elsa continued to stare up in the night sky, as she realized that her last real lead was gone, and once again, she had failed.

She slowly turned and walked away. She waved her hand, the blocks of ice that had trapped the rest of the trolls dissolving. They looked about, confused at what had just happened to them, and where Grand Pabbie was.

But Elsa had already left.

* * *

The next day, Elsa was once again sitting in her study, filling out documents. As she wrote, her mind was elsewhere. Particularly, she thought of her sister Anna. According to both her and Kristoff, she had not any problems sleeping the previous night; seemingly, "they" had left the princess alone, at least for the time being.

She heard a tapping at the window, and looked up; it was her ice eagle she had sent out the day before, lightly hitting its leg against the glass, another letter clutched in its foot.

Elsa moved to the window and opened it. The bird held out its leg for the queen to take the letter. When she did so, she examined the seal on the back of the envelope, and saw the sunny emblem embedded into the wax; it was from the King of Corona.

Elsa patted her bird on the head.

"Good work. Feel free to fly about the kingdom, just don't hurt anything. If I ever need you again, I'll whistle, like this."

Elsa whistled, and her creation listened, committing the sound to memory.

The frosty eagle nodded, then took off once again, flying towards the forest.

Opening the letter, Elsa began to read:

_To Her Majesty, Queen Elsa of Arendelle,_

_I have approved your request of an import. As of this day, on July 8th, 1841, a shipment of goods is en-route to your kingdom of Arendelle. The shipments are as follows: _

_-twenty-eight (28) cows_

_-forty (40) chickens _

_-thirty-one (31) goats_

_-two-thousand(2000) ears of corn_

_-eight-thousand and five-hundred (8500) corn kernels_

_-one-thousand and three-hundred (1300) carrots_

_-four-thousand and four-hundred (4400) carrot seeds_

_-nine-hundred (900) potatoes_

_When you have received your shipment, a payment of twelve-thousand, eight-hundred and fifty-two (12,852) shillings is expected. _

_Warm regards,_

_His Majesty, King Raimund of Corona_

Elsa put the letter aside; it was a hefty price to replace the lost goods from Lukas Evensen's farming operation, but it was worth it if it meant Arendelle would no longer risk a famine.

That was _one _problem solved.

At this point, she didn't know what to do next about the issues plaguing Arendelle. What _could_ she do? Grand Pabbie was gone, and so, there was no one left to turn to, no one else to ask for information.

Elsa took one more glance out the open window, trying to enjoy the gorgeous summer day.

But what happened next was terrifying.

A massive, black, saucer-like object suddenly materialized in the sky. It floated only a few hundred feet above the rooftops of Arendelle, blotting out the sun and casting a large shadow over the entire town, as well as the fjord. As everyone down in the village saw it, the shouts and horrified screams could be heard coming from both men and woman alike.

Had the saucer been there this entire time, floating over Arendelle, cloaked and hidden?

Elsa watched from her window, astounded, as the entire top of the North Mountain exploded. As it blew apart in a shower of snow, ice, and rock, something large began to emerge from the hole in the mountain. And that was when it hit Elsa; _the North Mountain had been hollow, all along._

The large object coming out of the mountain was a dodecahedron, and like the flying craft it was getting drawn towards, it was also black. Etched onto the numerous sides of the object were those same symbols Elsa had seen in the pictogram, as well as the angled lines and circles from Lukas' field.

The dodecahedron floated over to the much larger saucer, and it passed through the underside of it, disappearing inside. And then, the entire sky quickly flashed blood-red before the saucer turned into a ball of energy, rapidly shooting up into the sky, leaving the planet altogether.

Elsa was shocked; she stared out the window at what had just happened, trying to make sense of it all. But she couldn't, because none of it made any sense.

* * *

Eventually, Arendelle went back to normal (as "normal" as a kingdom could be with a monarch that had magical ice abilities). New crops were grown, more livestock were raised, and the country prospered. There were no more disappearing farms, no more mutilations of animals or people, and no more bizarre symbols in that pre-Sumerian text.

Anna never had any more nightmares of "them", and she went back to her usual cheerful, optimistic self in no time.

As for Grand Pabbie, his fate remained unknown. At one point, Elsa heard a rumor of a collection of greyish sand being found by the trolls in their valley, with a bit of grass and yellow crystal mixed in with it. But it was just that: a rumor.

There was only one last strange thing to happen in Arendelle: the old finance minister of Elsa's cabinet was found dead inside the basement of his home. He had slashed open his left wrist with a knife, and drawn something with his own blood. However, what he had drawn wasn't in that old pre-Sumerian language. Instead, the symbol was something entirely different; it was a pyramid. And on the inside of it, the finance minister had drawn an eye.

In the end, everyone was safe. And those unwelcome visitors were never encountered again.

As far as Arendelle knew, everything was fine.

_As far as they knew._


End file.
